Four Seasons
by tartan robes
Summary: A string of drabbles about Sarah O'Brien, lady's maid, throughout the years.
1. Spring

_0._

She's nine years old and running down the creek.

It's not a fair race, because they can't expect her to run in this stupid dress; but she picks up the ends and tries to sprint after her brother as best she can. On the other side, the neighbour kids are scrambling down as well. But she's not worried – they'll beat them. The O'Briens are a better family; everyone knows that. Their farm is bigger, their toys are nicer, and their mother is prettier – and that's all that matters, isn't it? Plus, Ainsley Wilson is a snot-nosed pig who stole Isla Murray's doll and lit it on fire behind the barn.

Ainsley Wilson is a snot-nosed pig.

Ainsley Wilson is a snot-nosed pig who's just surged ahead of her.

Feet crunching over leaves, leaping over rocks, Ainsley turns her head back to shoot Sarah a stupid grin. "Who's the loser now, O'Brien?" She sticks out her tongue, laughs an ugly laugh.

"Saw some smoke be'ind your 'ouse yesterday, Ainsley, what was that about?" Sarah shouts back – up ahead, the boys are neck in neck, tumbling down the hill. Her question was posed innocently enough, but when Ainsley looks back, Sarah shoots her a hard glare. _I'm not asking. I know what happened,_ she says cruelly – without ever opening her mouth.

Ainsley staggers, slows, and Sarah rushes ahead – down, down the slope. She collapses with her brother in a muddy victory. Mother will be mad at her for ruining the dress, but it doesn't matter now. She's won. She's won and she's got Ainsley wrapped around her fingers.

Already, Sarah O'Brien loves the feelings of power.

_1._

Once, her brother suggested pelting rocks at the Wilsons.

"Would keep 'em in their place," he had said, lighting a cigarette. All the older boys smoke. They lean against stonewalls and puff out streams of fog. Sarah thinks it's a fantastic sight; she longs to be able to do the same, to look like they do. Sometimes her brother lets her take a puff. She chokes a bit still, but she'll get the hang out it. She will.

"But… won't it 'urt?" Sarah had said, though she knew how stupid the question was. Of course it would hurt. These were rocks they were talking about – and her brother had a good arm too. If she closed her eyes, she could see Ainsley's body, face down in the ground, bleeding from the back of her head. Her eyes snapped open.

"I s'pose, but they've been askin' for it, 'aven't they?"

She sucked in a breath, closed her eyes, had been silent for a minute.

"Nah, they ain't worth it."

But secretly, she couldn't imagine ever actually hurting someone. Not in that way. She didn't do that sort of thing. Sarah kept secrets and lied, twisted things to suit her – but hurt someone? A rock wasn't tripping someone; a rock was harder, stronger, different.

She wasn't like that.

_2. _

She's never been in a house this grand before. The stairs reach higher and pictures are bigger and tables are longer. She hates it and she loves it. She loves it because she knows she's made it. She's no longer confined to the tiny houses with two other maids and only one sitting room. But she hates because when she moves from room to room, she sees all the finery she's not allowed to have. She polishes exquisite things she'll never be allowed to carry. Her mother could never have dreamed up the stuff they keep on the desks and tables, gathering dust. It sickens her, makes her angry enough to tip a vase over and watch it smash. They wouldn't even miss it.

But she can't do any of that. No, this is just the beginning. She's going to climb the ladder to the very top - and nothing's going to stop her. She's a housemaid today, but one day, sooner or later, she'll be pulling all the strings at Downton Abbey.

Still, some days she balances the china between two fingers, watching it wobble back and forth - back and forth.

_3._

The lady of the house is made of light.

She floats through the rooms, always finding some new trinket to dazzle her. Her smile is wide and when she makes eye contact with the housemaid, her eyebrows shoot upwards - like they share some sort of secret. (Sarah is very good with secrets.) Once, when the Lady's maid was ill, Sarah was allowed to fix her hair and help the Lady slip into her dress.

"Thank you, you're a dear," she says, admiring herself in the mirror. Her fingers play with the string of pearls around her neck. She slides the beads back and forth, knocking them against one another.

She plays with the ring on her finger, says airily, pulling words from a dream, "You know, O'Brien, sometimes I wonder if I made the right decision."

"I certainly 'ope you did, M'lady."

"His mother doesn't like me much."

"I wouldn't worry about that, M'lady."

"Oh, and why's that?"

"Becuase, M'lady, you're the 'ead of this 'ouse - not 'er."

And then she laughs, her neck arches back and the pearls collide against each other.

"I think, O'Brien," she says, leaning in, "we might become good friends."

Sarah O'Brien has never wanted anything more.

(And she hates herself for it.)

* * *

><p><em>Not really sure if I'm going to continue this. Tell me what you think of it so far, I guess, and we'll see where it goes? <em>


	2. Summer

_1._

When the new footman shows up, she's the Lady's maid and that, she knows, is nothing to laugh at. It's as high as she's going to get so long as Mrs. Hughes is still breathing, so O'Brien (Sarah has been discarded, left behind to rot) pretends that she's content. Some nights she is; she's closer to her ladyship than any other maid could dream of being. She plants a few passing comments and Cora makes a few changes and life is well and good – but it isn't quite enough. No, she's not quite there yet.

And then in walks the new footman. He's got a smirk etched onto his face and stands like her brother did back at home. He'd be all right, she guesses, if he knew his place. Thinks he's some sort of heaven-sent king from what she's seen. She just rolls her eyes, runs her needle through the fabric thrice more. She doesn't have time for young insolence and arrogance. Least of all the two in a foolish, young boy.

So she's hardly impressed with him, though the rest of the maids are. Then again, she's a bit older than them and doesn't have time to pine and giggle – unlike them, she has an important job to do.

_2._

He has a few letters in a pocket, pressed against his heart. It sounds much too sentimental to be the cold and cunning Thomas, but she knows it to be true. He's putting on his jacket in the hallway when one of these letters falls out. He doesn't realize (too careless, too arrogant to notice it), but she does. Of course she does. Mr. Carson thinks he knows all the affairs in this house, Mrs. Hughes reckons she's got an eye on every moving body, but they're both wrong. No one knows the house's affairs better than her. So, naturally, she picks the letter up.

She has it opened up, about to read its contents – for surely this was going to be quite the scandal. Or at least a limb to twist. What oh what could Thomas be hiding? She's about to read the first sentence, when she hears footsteps coming down the hall. She folds it up, wants to slip it into her pocket –_ Stupid O'Brien, should've done that first_ – when she sees his face poking out. It's too late to put it away. She spots a hair or two out of place and stops herself from laughing. He _must_ be distressed. She folds the letter along the crease, smiles at him.

"Some letter you've got there," she says. It never hurt her to lie.

"Y – you've read it?" His face goes white.

She doesn't say anything, just hands it back to him, turns on her heel, and disappears around the corner.

When she goes outside, he's already there, breathing out clouds just like her brother would have. He sees her, raises an eyebrow, and offers her one of his. She declines.

"Y'know, I don't plan on being a footman forever."

"Do any of us?" She leans against the wall, sucks in a breath, doesn't choke.

"I reckon I'll be a valet soon enough. S'pose I could be a butler too, if I felt like it."

"Ha. Well I guess you'd be better than Mr. Carson. Always breathin' down our necks, 'e is."

"What makes him so high-and-mighty anyway? He just the same as us."

She looks at him again and this time, despite the smoke and the fog and the wind, thinks she sees the boy clearer than ever before. She raises a brow, blows out another stream.

"Not quite the same."  
><em><br>3._

Thomas is sick of being second footman and she's sick of the first footman, so there's only one thing to do: get rid of him.

They memorize Mr. Carson's patterns, Mrs. Hughes' rounds. They plan it out, backs pressed against the brick wall, hands covered in ash, lungs on fire. They get it down to a science; they get so good at it they stop having to speak, they just look at each other and they _know_.

"And what if we get caught?" He asks.

"We won't."

On Monday morning, Thomas and Phillip are in the dining room. On Monday morning, Sarah O'Brien is in the room next door. On Monday morning, Thomas can't shut up about the weather, about Mr. Carson, about their duties – so Phillip can't leave.

Ms. O'Brien has the vase between her fingers again. Back and forth, back and forth. She grins, back and forth, back and –

The vase falls off the table, onto the ground.

She's out the door, holding in her laughter, when she hears it shatter.

_4.  
><em>  
>Something's broken in the next room.<p>

"What was that?" Phillip's eyes are wide, nervous. Thomas turns to the doorway, waits three seconds. _This is too easy. _

"Shall we go see?" He asks. He lets Phillip open the door. They walk towards the shards of white and blue, looking down at the broken pot.

"We're so dead, so, so dead," Phillip moans.

"We?"

"We _what_, Thomas?" Mr. Carson's voice echoes in the doorway. He steps in slowly, evenly – until he sees the mess on the ground. The butler's mouth opens and then closes without a sound.

(Outside, fresh smoke in their throats, Thomas mimes out the scene and she laughs, wickedly.)  
><em><br>5._

"O'Brien, you don't know anything about the vase, do you?"

The maid says nothing, secures the necklace around her lady's neck.

"It was _her _favourite."

Cora's reflection rolls its eyes, sighs. There is only one _her_; the Dowager Countess. O'Brien suppresses a nasty remark, ties up her lady's hair.

"Because, if you did know anything, O'Brien, you should tell me."

Cora turns around, takes her hand, looks her in the eyes.

"Because we're friends, aren't we? Because I know I can trust you."

O'Brien swallows.

"It was Phillip, M'lady."

_6.  
><em>  
>She doesn't say a thing and neither does he, but she's fairly sure he knows she doesn't know. Or, he knows she didn't actually read the letters. But none of that matters anymore. They aren't friends like Anna and Gwen are friends. They aren't even friends, are they? Maybe on a good day, she concedes. She has her secrets and he has his and she respects that. Mostly. (She's still waiting for another letter to drop out of his pocket.) But it doesn't matter. None of that matters.<p>

"Shall we take out Mister Carson now?" She asks, "Or are you content with being first footman?"

"We ought to start with the valet first, shouldn't we?"

They're allies at best, she decides. And she'd rather have allies than friends.  
><em><br>7._

"Know how to dance, O'Brien?"

"I know not to ask stupid questions."

"Is that a yes or a no?"

"What do you think?"

"I think I need a dancing partner."

He passes the book over to her. The page is a maze of footsteps and drawings and diagrams. She snorts.

"I know it."

The cigarette falls out of Thomas' mouth.

"So you _do _know how to dance, then?" Thomas' head is pressed against the wall, he's laughing.

"Will it shut you up if I show you the bloody thing?" She throws her stub at his face, and he straightens, brow raised, willing to play along.

"Is that supposed to be frightening?" She says as he flexes his fingers, "You're a grizzly bear, not a mouse."

"You're supposed to spin like a gentleman – heaven help _you _– not a hurricane."

She's incredibly grateful no one else ever comes this way. If they saw her _dancing _with Thomas, she thinks she might just die. Lady's maids, she's certain, don't dance. It's far below them, that's for sure.

"Alright, that's quite enough." She shakes his hand from her back, pushes him off her. He's still laughing. "This never happened neither," she adds, opening the door.

"'Course not," he says, but for the next three days, whenever their eyes meet, he starts laughing all over again. 

* * *

><p><em>Urk, sorry about this chapter. I really wanted to touch on ThomasO'Brien, but it just wasn't coming. So sorry for all the awkwardness! _


	3. Autumn

_0._

She put the soap there.

She put the soap there because she was angry, because she was bitter; because she had stood by Her Ladyship for ten years, because she had always been there, because they were _friends_. And, just like that, there was an ad in the paper. Cora didn't even have the gall to say it upfront.

She put the soap there and thought of running down the creek. She put the soap there and thought of her brother and weight of a stone in her hands.

"Sarah O'Brien," she said, "This is not who you are."

She put the soap there.

But she had tried to stop it. She had tried; she had tried.

It wasn't enough.

_1._

She walks downstairs after the Doctor has stood by Cora's side, after the baby – what was a baby – has come out. She walks down the stairs and her legs feel like lead and her heart is an anchor, sinking, sinking, sinking. _If you even have one, _she thinks bitterly. She feels numb all over. She doesn't realize when the other servants are talking to her. She barely feels a thing when Thomas says it was barely the size of a hamster. She doesn't feel a thing when William punches Thomas hard.

She thinks, _It should be me. _

That night, she stands with her back pressed to her door, eyes wide open. She waits for the tears to come, but she hasn't cried in so long; she doesn't know how. She's tired of course, tired from work, tired from fear, tired from guilt, but doesn't let herself sleep. She stays up, thinking that, at the very least, her eyes will get raw and then they will cry out of desperation if nothing else.

_2._

In the days to come, Cora is barely alive. She does her hair anyway, even though Her Ladyship never goes downstairs. She wraps Her Ladyship in blankets. The words are always on the edges of her lips, _forgive me, forgive me, forgive me. _

– She wasn't even going to replace her.

The Dowager Countess asks her about applications and resumes at the garden party. They're all for her, not for Cora.

The anchor drops, drops, drops –

Plunges through the ground and, if she's lucky, drags her to Hell.

_3._

Days, weeks, months later, when it's silent, she can still hear Her Ladyship's scream.

_4._

Thomas jumps ship too, and after he leaves she understands what is to be alone. She always thought she was, but now Sarah O'Brien really, truly is.

Thomas is gone and Cora is gone too. She's gone because she's a husk of what she was, because her heart is empty, because someone stole the life that once pumped through her veins.

_You_, she thinks bitterly_, stole it._

_You killed Cora._

_5._

You won't let anyone hurt Her Ladyship ever again.

Least of all yourself.

_6._

She's not sure why Thomas still sends her letters (or why she writes responses she can't give him). This isn't who they are. It's far too sentimental, she thinks, it's disgusting. But, secretly, she's thankful. Thankful there's still someone to lean on, even though she can't tell him a thing. When she reads his letters too – what she can understand of them, what isn't blacked out – she swears he's afraid as well. That they're both afraid of things they don't know and things they'll never say.

He says he wants to come home.

So she says she'll make it happen, she'll bring him back to Downton.

She'll take care of him too.

_7._

The words say her brother's dead, but she head says it can't be true.

When she saw him last he was shaking in his boots, he was plagued by demons. He could see enemies when it was just her, hear bullets when it was just her voice. She had listened to him scream in the night, listened to his bones knock against each other – fear in every swing.

He can't be dead, she thinks.

He just can't.

This time, she finds her tears.

She crumples up the letter, crumples up herself, presses herself against the door.

(She thinks, bitterly, that she was his favourite. She was his favourite and she failed him. She was a favourite to only one person, and she couldn't do a damn thing.)

She can count the graves under her floorboards. The baby, that part of Cora, her brother, maybe even Thomas.

_It should be me. _

_8._

She's the reason Thomas comes back above them, not below again, but he never thanks her. She doesn't need it; him being back is enough. For once, it's enough.

When he takes off his glove, though, she feel something lurch in her stomach.

Another thing gone wrong.

He shrugs, smokes it off, says it's what brought him home anyway. That's not right, she thinks, that shouldn't have had to happen.

When she draws the needle through cloth that night, she thinks of sewing Thomas's hand together, thinks of mending it, making it whole again. If only she could.

_You'd have to sew up all the holes inside yourself first_, she thinks.

_9._

Mr. Lang is the brother she just lost. She knows what he has before he says a thing; she can see it in the way he shakes, the way he talks, the way he vanishes when he's standing right before her.

She'll make things right this time, she thinks.

She lies for him, she covers for him, she does what she can. She won't let him lose his job; she won't lose him to the madness either.

But then he screams in the night and everyone knows.

She wants to hold him close; she can't remember wanting to hold a thing in her life, but she wants to hold him. She wants to hold him like a child and run her hands through his hair. She wants to tell him all the things she forgot to tell her brother.

"It's all right," she wants to say, "I'm here. I've always been here."

"I'm sorry, so, so sorry," she wants to say.

"You were always my favourite, too," she wants to say.

"I love you," she wants to say.

_10._

Cora feels like a forest fire. It makes O'Brien nervous; she wonders if it's eating her from the inside out, wonders if it will rob from her of whatever it is she didn't destroy last time. Cora barely says a word, sometimes she makes sounds, most of the time she throws up all the things she might have said. O'Brien doesn't dare leave her side.

Robert comes and goes, as do the daughters, but she stays – every hour of the day, every minute, she doesn't even sleep. She owes Cora this much. She owes Cora so much more.

"It's going to be all right, M'Lady. It's all right. It's all right. It's all going to be all right."

_It has to be_.

She holds her hand because she thinks if she does, Cora won't be allowed to leave. If she tethers her somehow – though, why anyone would want to be tethered to _her _is beyond her. But it's something. It's something.

When Cora finally speaks she says, "O'Brien? Is that you O'Brien?"

And the anchor drops deeper. She shouldn't ask for her, O'Brien thinks. She should be asking for His Lordship. She should be asking for someone better.

But she's so happy Cora is speaking, so happy she's still there, tethered. "Yes M'Lady," she says, "it's me, M'Lady."

"You're so good to me –"

The anchor is around her neck, pulling her underwater.

"Always been so good to me."

She has lied to Cora for years. Lied by never telling her, never saying a single thing. She didn't know how.

But now, but now…

"Not always, M'Lady."

"So good," Cora whispers.

She shakes her head though Cora cannot see, "No." She can feel the tears building, she can feel herself starting to cry for the second time. "And the fact is I want to ask so much for your forgiveness." Despite herself, O'Brien holds Cora's hand tighter. "Because I did something once which I bitterly regret." She's drowning. "Bitterly."

"If you could only know how much –"

But then she's gone again and it's just O'Brien holding her hand, trying to keep Cora there.

Trying to make things right again.


	4. Winter

_0._

She preferred Thomas in his suit. It made her think he was going places.

And that's what she wanted all along. She wanted him to go places. Wasn't that what these years – all of these years – had been about? Making him valet, putting him in charge of Downton – business had been the next step, the logical step, the step he deserved. (Sometimes, when she looks in the mirror now, she doesn't recognize herself. Who is Sarah O'Brien anyway? The only answer that comes to mind is _lady's maid_. Sarah O'Brien, always and forever a lady's maid.)

He leans against the wall, lighting his cigarette with his gloved hand.

"You stayin' 'ere, then?" She says.

"You sound disappointed."

"Maybe I am."

_1._

"Do you think she'll be happy, O'Brien?" Cora says quietly, watching the reflection of hands pin up her hair.

"Pardon, M'lady?"

"Lady Mary and Sir Richard – do you think they'll be happy?"

O'Brien doesn't dare look into the mirror; she doesn't want to see Cora's eyes.

"I'm no expert, M'lady," she says, slowly, "I suppose one never really, truly knows. Were you 'appy, M'lady, when you married His Lordship?"

"Yes." She doesn't need to look in the mirror now – she knows Cora's smiling. She can hear it, feel it.

"And are you 'appy now, M'lady?" She pushes in the final pin.

The silence chews away at her fingers, sears her throat. She hovers over her lady's neck, trying to find something, anything to do.

"I used to be very, very happy, O'Brien," she hears Cora whisper, "now I'm not so sure."

Her hand is resting on her lady's shoulder and she feels Cora's hand find it, squeeze it, gently.

"Thank you, O'Brien, I can manage."

One never, truly knows.

_2.  
><em>  
>She has slept in the same bed for over a decade. It's small and there's never enough room to move. She packs the sheets in tight on either side, so she can't move, so she's locked in. She hopes squeeze herself so tight – a snake coiling around its prey, smashing in the ribs, strangling the lungs – so that the sound stays in.<p>

(She does not think she yells or screams or cries in her sleep, but one can never be too careful.)

One day, she realizes grimly, she will die in this bed.

She hopes to die in her sleep, because she's too much of a coward for any other death.

_3._

She thinks she sees Mr. Lang when she's in the village.

She sees him from the side, notices the small tremours in his hands, though the rest of him still stands straight, rigid. At attention, she thinks. She follows the silhouette, tries to catch up with him. Is he better? Is he working? She was always dangerously curious. But when she turns the corner, she finds herself facing a wall.

He's gone, nothing more than dust and a trick of the light, she thinks.

Just another ghost.

_4._

On the night before Christmas, she catches him outside. The smoke turns into snowflakes and the snowflakes fly back into the night sky and everything is black, black, black.

"Not feelin' the 'oliday spirit?" She snorts, lighting up.

"You'd think there'd be something special about tomorrow, the way they go on about it."

She breathes out.

"But it's all rubbish, ain't it?" He continues, "A baby was born years and years ago. What does that even mean?"

She knows Thomas doesn't believe. She doesn't blame him, no not at all. What is there to believe in nowadays, anyway?

"So I reckon you didn't get me anything then?" She says.

"Do I look like the fat man?"

"Give it a few years, maybe."  
><em><br>5._

She shouldn't like the servants ball, but for once she has all the power and everyone else accepts it.

"Fancy a dance, your Lordship?" And he can't say no.

The thing about dancing with O'Brien, Robert Crawley soon realizes, is that she's the one who really leads.

"Her Ladyship looks very pretty tonight, if you don't mind me saying so, M'lord."

"Yes, I suppose she does." Lord Grantham avoids her eyes, but she doesn't let that hurt her feelings (ha, as if it ever could) – she's not here for him.

"If you don't mind me saying, M'lord, it was less of a supposition and more of a fact."

They spin.

"She looks especially pretty, M'lord, when she's 'appy, don't you think?"

Robert Crawley is silent.

"If you don't mind me saying, I think she deserves all the 'appiness in the world."

_Lord knows I owe her it._

"Wouldn't you agree, M'lord?"

And for the first time on the dance floor, their eyes properly meet.

"Yes, O'Brien, yes I would."

_6._

She spent her half-day off stitching them. Sewing _T. B. _into the corners, making them nice. She picked out green for the handkerchiefs, because he's always looked good in the colour, silver for the stitching. She thinks, maybe, it looks a bit too much like his uniform. These are supposed to be for his suit, not his servant's wear.

Or maybe the colours will help him remember her.

_Since when were you so sentimental? _She asks herself with an inwards sneer, _Since when have you had a heart? _

When hands them to him Christmas morning, she shrugs, "Well I started 'em because I was bleedin' bored and I figured I might as well finish 'em. Not like I have any use for 'em anyways."

"Yeah," he mutters, handing her a package in exchange.

"Bullshit holiday if there ever was one," he adds, clutching her present tightly against his chest.

"I'll say." And she grins at him for a fraction of a second, a death grip on his.

_7._

They are wicked, wicked people.

They don't deserve to be happy; she doesn't deserve to be happy. But then who really deserves happiness in this world? And since when do the deserving get it? (She thinks this most strongly as she attaches pearls around Her Ladyship's neck, remembers when the beads used to crash and laugh against each other.) She doesn't kid herself, doesn't allow herself to dream of the things she used to want. Instead, she only represses a smile when she sees Thomas try on his suit once again, tuck a handkerchief in his breast pocket. And she nods, slightly, when she hears Robert tell Cora she's beautiful, when she sees them kiss – really kiss, kiss like they used to before the war – again.

She was never a praying soul, but she prays for the two of them – pearls and cloth.

She never prays for herself.

She knows, oh she knows, that this cannot go on forever. That she owes Cora the truth. It's been years and years and she owes Cora that at the very least.

But she's a wicked, wicked person, so, some nights, she entertains taking the secret with her to the grave.

God needn't save her soul; she doesn't wish that for herself.  
><em><br>8._

Yes, she thinks, she will probably die in this bed.

She will die with the tyrant, Mrs. Hughes, in the room on her left and silly housemaids to her right. She will die while footmen snore on the outside of the door, while the valet turns over, plagued by a nightmare, while the butler pulls the covers over his head. (Thomas will be none of them.) She will die after she has helped Her Ladyship out of an evening dress, taken all the pins out from her hair, unclasped her necklace. She will die after seeing Cora smile, after seeing her happy.

She will have the sheets extra tight that night, so that all her secrets – the good and the bad – will never come out.

And Thomas will not cry when she dies, nor bring flowers to her grave. But that's all okay. It's more than okay.

It's just how she wants it to end.

* * *

><p><em>Sorry this chapter was so delayed; it was really hard for me to put together. This is most likely the end of this, so I'd just like to thank you all so much - again - for all of your comments. They're very much appreciated! <em>


End file.
